“7,000 Pink Feathers, discarded plastic bags upcycled” BALENCIAGA SS25 by Demna Gvasalia collaboration – Shanghai 2024
The House of Balenciaga has reinterpreted the iconic embroidered gown designed by Cristobal Balenciaga in 1937, collaborating with William Amor who crafted 7,000 upcycled feathers for the garment.
For this piece, William Amor ennobles the plastic bag, transforming this humble material into ornamental feathers made all the more airy and graceful by dying them powder pink.
The project kicked off with the lengthy process of sorting, cleaning and standardising these frequently cast-off consumer products.
Once the ink from the logos and other markings was removed, the bags were dyed a soft pastel pink, one man’s scrap becoming the raw design material.
The material was cut into strips using a special hot-twisting technique before William Amor created the stems, stiff enough to hold while offering excellent flexibility. A central rachis was then hot twisted and then each barb of the feather formed one by one using a meticulous “torn” technique imagined by the artist.
These whimsical feathers full of meaning were placed and embroidered to create the modern-day version of this couture gown by the House of Balenciaga. The final result was a stunning gown with the wow factor that closed the Demna Gvasalia runway show for Balenciaga SS25 on 30 May 2024 in Shanghai.
PROJECT TEAM
William Amor, Valérie Henry, Rémy Jarnoux, Marion Le Bellec, Anaïs André, Léa Levy, Louna Ghiotto, Cécile Lefeuvre, Thais Krysmann, Aurélie Buschaud, Louise Camilli, Alyssa Jos
PRESS
THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY (Hankyung) | Disposables are as valuable as crystal
Balanciaga – L’impressionnante robe rose fait le show sur Instagram
SEEDS OF MEANING
250 plastic bags
(recycled from the streets of Paris in the 2010s)
Date:
9 June 2024
